Paget Brewster
(Allyson Harlan)

Q: What attracted you to this project?
A: I was shooting a movie in Canada, and I got a call from my manager saying there’s a movie that wants me.   It’s Rob Lowe, and it’s in New Orleans.   I’m prepared to just say yes now, having always wanted to come to New Orleans and having worked with Rob about six years ago.  

Q: What is this story about?
A: Essentially there is a happy family in St. Louis and then suddenly, the husband loses his job and his wife convinces him to start writing a book he started years ago that happens to be about her father’s death. It becomes a national bestseller and ends up affecting their lives.   He flies around the country to promote his book and it fractures this family.  Even though the wife told him to do it, now she wants him to stop, wants him to come home and wants things to be normal.  Meanwhile, there is a figure in the movie that comes forward, this mysterious, kind of other worldly, maybe-not-human character who tells Rob he’s going to die.    So Rob starts questioning what he’s doing and actually makes the mistake of trying to keep his family out of it so that he won’t hurt them.  But in fact, the purpose is to make him re-evaluate what he wants and return to what is true for him and what he really needs. 

Q: How would you describe your character, Allyson, and her relationship with Rob Lowe’s character?
A: Allyson is married to Rob’s character, and they have an 8-year-old daughter named Carson.  Allyson is a part-time schoolteacher who returns to working more in the course of the story because her husband disappears.   And she’s sort of a down-home girl.   Allyson and Rob’s marriage is pretty great.   When we originally find them, they appear to be pretty happy and pretty satisfied.  Allyson’s point of view is that all of a sudden her husband is gone and she wants what they have before, which is a fairly simple life.

Q: What are some of the themes in this movie?
A: Ultimately it is redemption.   It is struggling through the loss of one’s self.   It is redefining oneself compared to how the world sees you, how the people you love see you and who you really are.